Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page on Wednesday offered their most detailed glimpse inside the company’s operations since selling shares to the public in August, including the firm’s inability to swiftly hire enough computer engineers abroad to foster innovation.
Among the major challenges, said Eric Schmidt, chief executive of the Silicon Valley-based firm, is managing the transition from being a US company with an international presence to becoming a globally run company headquartered in the United States.
Most of the company’s foreign offices, to date, handle ad sales rather than focusing on research and product development.
Brin said the company’s inability to recruit more top-tier computer scientists and engineers abroad is slowing its plans to make Google available to users of cell phones and other portable devices. Google — which faces stiff competition from search engine competitor Yahoo in Japan — plans to hire more computer engineers in Asia, where wireless technology is ahead of that in the US. ‘‘We are unquestionably not getting the quantity we would like,’’ Brin said, in response to a question about hiring during a multi-hour session with Wall Street analysts. ‘‘The culture and utilisation of mobile in the US is so low compared to other parts of the world that this is not the best place to develop the best products in the mobile space.’’
Most innovation at Google flows from the company’s main campus in Mountain View, California, where more than 1,000 computer scientists work on an array of projects that interest them.
But the company’s young founders remain so hands-on that no new product is released without their input and review.
Brin, Page and Schmidt run Google as a triumvirate. They do agree on one thing: a 70/20/10 management model, in which 70 per cent of resources are devoted to improving the core search engine, 20 per cent are designated for products related to search, and 10 per cent are earmarked for pure research
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